Moon Review: There are many sides to the Moon, which side are you on?

I love actors, no really I do. They have this quality about them that I like. Some might call it an intangible quality, but it’s very easily explainable. As a writer, it’s my job to create a character’s motivations. To know them inside and out so that I know how they would react in just about every possible situation imaginable. An actor has to find a way to understand those motivations and bring out the emotions they cause. The way I see it, writers and actors go hand in hand. When I see an actor take on a difficult role, it gets very exciting.

This was the case with Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Reynolds in Buried, and most recently Sam Rockwell in Moon. Another film in my long list of movies that I always meant to see but never got around to until now and again things are interesting. Where Moon is different from the previously mentioned films is that it used a visual effect to tell a major part of the story. Mainly that Sam Rockwell played several (two specifically) distinct versions of his character to play off of. This technique is one that is used often these days when dealing with characters who are twins or multiple characters.

The first time I remember this occurring is in The Nutty Professor with Eddie Murphy playing his character’s entire family with various prosthetics, but since then it has been used in movies like The Matrix, The Social Network, as well as TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville and the recently cancelled Ringer. This can be a really effective technique if used in the right way. It can also go horribly wrong if not done properly. Unfortunately I have seen both in the multitude of films and television that I watch.  When it comes to Moon, I think that it is used properly. Through most of the film I had my concerns, but as things progressed I was able to understand why they did it.

And that’s true of things not limited to the use of the doubling visual effect when it comes to this movie. The story centers around the character of Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), a man on a three year contract to harvest the moon’s resources for clean energy that can be used on Earth. One of the main things that bugged me about the film is the idea of a single person on a moon base. If you’re going to put a mining camp on the moon why have only one person running it? This, along with most of my questions about the film, gets answered by the end and I am left generally satisfied with the story as a whole.

What really hits home for me more than anything though is the performance of Rockwell. He manages to make two versions of himself very much distinct in their mannerisms and approaches to the situations they face that you might almost believe they were entirely different people despite their obvious similarities. The only other character to play off is the full on robotic helper droid GERTY, played through voice work by the great Kevin Spacey. And even there Mr. Spacey is able to bring a certain amount of nuance to an inanimate object that has you questioning the robot’s motives much in the way that you did in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This movie is a perfect example of how acting can make or break a film. And in the case of Moon, I definitely think it makes the film.

There are many sides to the Moon, which side are you on? I honestly could tell you because they all make such a great case.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Who wins?

Comic book movies are by no means unique in this day and age. There are so many of them that you’d almost think that comic books and Hollywood studios are the same thing. Of course, in some ways they are given that the biggest comic book producers, Marvel and DC Comics, are both owned by major Hollywood studios (DC by Warner Brothers and Marvel more recently by Disney). However when it comes to comics, they are by no means the only game in town. You’ve got The Walking Dead being published by Image, Hellboy and R.I.P.D. and many others by Dark Horse, and of course Scott Pilgrim vs. The World by Oni Press.

What all these comics have in common, obviously, is that they have been or are being adapted into feature films or in the case of The Walking Dead, a TV show. But I think one of the things that might make Scott Pilgrim different is that in a way it’s not just a comic book adaptation. In a way it’s also a video game adaptation. This is where things start to get interesting because as much as comic book adaptations have a bad reputation in the filmmaking community video games have an even worse reputation. A reputation that is not entirely undeserved. Many video game adaptations have gone horribly wrong in their transitions from game console to (most often) large scale live action film.

Going into this film then, I can certainly understand why people might not rush out to see it since just those two things already creates two strikes against it. Unfortunately for those that didn’t (in which I count myself), those two strikes are part of the reason you should have seen it, particularly if you grew up in that bit of a sweet spot era when comic books and video games were a central figure of your childhood. The film manages to blend those two worlds together almost seamlessly while not taking away from the reality of the film elements of today. Having never read the comic book on which it’s based myself, I can’t really comment on just how faithful it stays to the comic book or the video games for which it makes numerous references throughout, but from what I can gather the creator of the comics was heavily involved in the production of the film and he seems quite happy with it based on what I hear.

It strikes the right balance between the simple, quiet, character driven moments that are necessary for us to care about the characters we’re being introduced to, some of us for the first time, and the epic battle sequences that are littered throughout to ramp up the emotional adrenaline, all of which builds to the dramatic climax that both video game and comic book based films are often known for. The film is a visual masterpiece just in the way that all the graphics and special effects are more often than not a part of the story and enhance it in many ways. At its core though, the film is about an awkward teenager who falls in love with a woman that has a lot more baggage then he was probably expecting to deal with when he asked her out.

If you’ve ever been in love with someone you weren’t sure how to, you will understand this film. Or wished your life and relationships were a lot more fun than it is, you will understand this film. And if you’ve ever experienced both, then this movie is definitely for you.

So, in the epic battle of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, who wins? The audience wins.